“Remember, now,” observed the principal Greek to the master, “you are to be ready to weigh and make sail at a moment’s notice; it may be to-night, even—it may be tomorrow or on the following day—I cannot say, but you must be prepared.”
“Signor, si,” answered the master in a tone of deep respect. “I will take care to obey your commands to the letter; but I am afraid there may be some difficulty with the authorities at the custom-house. They once suspected me of smuggling, though I was as innocent as the babe unborn, and they may detain me.”
“You know the consequences,” returned the Greek, with a fierce look; “I will listen to no excuse if anything miscarries, so look to it!”
“It is a dangerous expedition you go on, signore,” observed the Sicilian master.
“Dangerous!” exclaimed the Greek, in a tone of contempt. “Danger is the food we live on, the air we breathe; without it life would lose half its zest. I’ll tell you what, my friend, he is but a base-born slave who knows not how to live, and fears to die. Give me a life of activity and excitement, and when that ceases death will be welcome.”
“You, signore, are the best judge of your own taste,” answered the Sicilian; “for my part, I am content to make an honest livelihood by trading between my native city of Syracuse and yonder good port of Valetta, where, please the holy saints, we shall drop our anchor in the course of ten minutes.”
“And anything else by which you may turn a colonna,” muttered the Greek.
The speronara continued in her course, and as she came off Fort Ricasoli, the other person habited as a Greek, who had not hitherto spoken, observed the four figures suspended on the southern bastion.
“Holy Virgin, what are those?” he exclaimed in Italian.
“Those, signore,” answered the padrone, as the master of the speronara was called, with particular emphasis, “are pirates.”